Beginner, Again

I’ve been a beginner countless times, like most of us. I’ve maybe had more begins than ends but that’s another story.

At some points in your life, especially in the youth, you’ve no other options than being a beginner. Other times, being a beginner may be a choice. But when you have established assets in your life, like a prestigious job, a specialistic knowledge or anything else that required ages to build, deciding to be a beginner again starts to get tough.

It’s not just a matter of convenience. Dedicating energies to challenges where others are decades ahead, instead of investing those energies where you can profit much more, it’s a hard choice, especially if you need your ventures to be sustainable. But the strongest obstacles often come from a hardened attitude.

With time, when it comes to being a beginner again, your public and intimate images of yourself, the well-established roles that you now have in life, they stand in your way.

Some people are comfortable with being a beginner again; some are not.

Some are obliged.

I’ve been lucky enough to be in this latter category.

I’ve had a “growing” life, both on the private and the business sides. I’d say that it’s been a constant growth till 48. An inefficient growth, mostly far from what I wanted in life. You can’t have everything, okay, but I’ve always been the greatest obstacle between me and my dreams. Outside, I’ve had plenty of opportunities. I can’t complain.

But, at some point, I put myself in a corner. I like to say that leaving a prestigious and loved job has been a decision, but the reality is that a toxic situation had gone outside my control, and I didn’t accept it.

Things like these happen. And I’ve seen them happening to others before me, enough to know the whole story in advance. Yet, I didn’t see that arriving early enough.

When you see your long term efforts come to a harsh dead end, maybe complicated by difficult relationships, you can’t digest it easily. It’s like mourning. For me, that job was more than a “job” because of the unique circumstances. It was something where I invested much more than Business Me.

I went through a trauma, even if I handled it silently, and still nobody knows now, except for a few dears.

I felt that I was someway done with my previous career. I wanted to restart from scratch as farther as possible from what had been. Maybe in directions that I should have considered before but that life had archived.

Whatever, I found myself in a difficult position.

I went through a lap period to give me time to reinvent myself, inheriting a previous self too big and wrong for my future.

Lucky to have time, but time runs fast, and it did.

I took the occasion for degrowth. Not just outside. I freed myself from so many things that Mary Condo could vlog about my brain.

And I restarted from what I like, and my purpose. The new me that followed has deep roots in the true me. And it could not have happened without the hard stop.

I restarted writing. Not an income source, but that’s me.

I restarted developing software. That is for need, but I like it. I was an engineer before sucking milk. I was a developer when you stored software on tapes. That’s me.

I started rock climbing. The fear of heights prevented me from approaching it before, but now it was time.

I restarted researching in psychology, philosophy, esoterism, and much more. And that’s indeed always been me at the core.

And I started a few other things. Already too much for the new me. Time to declutter again, but just to channel my energies.

What I am now it’s okay.

I’m on a journey, again. I’ve lost my external status. I’m late for too many things. It’s hard, much more than expected.

But that’s me.

The old me was not bad, and not fake. Not too much, at least. And I’ve recycled much of it. But it was gone far from what I want to see in my life.

I’m an explorer of human nature, a writer, an engineer, a developer, a rock climber. And in every one of those identities, I’m a brand new beginner, or a beginner again. Challenging, but it feels refreshing.

It feels… right.

Freedom comes at a cost. Change comes at a cost.

But lack of freedom and lack of change have a cost too. They cost life.

A beginner, again. And this time, it feels like it’s the right me.